


the opposite of peace is not war; it's creation.

by Idealai



Category: La bohème - Puccini/Illica/Giacosa, Rent - Larson
Genre: Metafiction, Prose Poem, Remediation, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-09 18:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14721320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idealai/pseuds/Idealai
Summary: 1892. 1989. Paris. New York City. Marcello and Rodolfo and Mimi and Musetta and Schaunard and Colline. Mark and Roger and Mimi and Maureen and Angel and Collins. Two dates and two cities and two bands of souls (living and dying and loving) immortalized in word and song, all between the fifty-one million, nine hundred and thirty-three thousand and two hundred minutes separating those two dates; the same way a piece of golden string is stretched between two hands.





	the opposite of peace is not war; it's creation.

 

Paris and New York City, 1892 and 1989 are two different worlds. Except the dust claims realm over the floorboards and the coldness of 1892’s Paris is the copy of 1989’s Alphabet City chill. Except the shouts of the street – of activists and protestors, of the hungry and cold and forgotten – still carry the same sharp edge to their voices. Only instead of befouling the name of the royals and the bourgeoisie, fifty-one and nine hundred minutes later, they’re crying out for a cure to a sickness called AIDS. They’re crying out into the scared hallways and high-heighted places of Senate and Congress and they only find silence. After all, it’s just the trannies and poofs that are dying, so why else should anyone else care?

 

_There is no future… there is no past…_

 

It’s fifty-million and nine-hundred minutes and still the proof is shown that hatred and apathy and careless politicians are timeless. It shows in the innocent men and women going grey and souls slipping through open windows by the dozens every week (by TB or AIDS, different sicknesses, different heads, same monsters). It shows in those going blue from winter’s bite and skeletal from wasting stomachs. And it shows in the fact that Mark/Marcello can only still look at Roger/Rodolfo and anything else (a brush of the fingers, a tender kiss, a fitting of limbs) would risk their lives and dignity.

 

_… thank God this moment's not the last …_

 

And above all things, it shows in how the souls of one era still share in hungering and living and loving fifty-one million, nine hundred and thirty-three thousand and two hundred minutes after their souls slipped out and joined the blue of the ceiling of the world.

 

_… there's only us, there's only this …_

 

Mimi and Mimi are just two different women with the same name, the innocent ingénue and the nineteen-year-old sex-worker. Yet they look at the world (filled with death and shadows and glitter) with roses in their eyes, the only rebellion they get allowed, the rebellion of clinging to innocence to a city that devours it whole. And when they kiss the person they love, they pretend that the warmth of Death’s breath against themselves is just the warmth of the candles.

 

_… forget regret or life is yours to miss …_

 

Roger and Rodolfo are the night and day to each other, the winter-chilled poet and the disease-veined guitarist. And yet they speak their words aloud and wish to bring forth light and beauty and glory (glory, for the soul of two men). Words are born from their mouths and die in the silver light of the city and when they look at their Mimis’ and they find the heartbreak of leaving Mimi more manageable than watching Mimi turn into a ghost before their eyes (if there is one thing made immortal throughout the ages, it is the heartbreak of wondering who will live beyond the other).

 

_… no other road, no other way, no day but today …_

 

Mimi and Musetta are two different sets of people, the charming scarlet-adorned courtesan and Gran Fury performance artist. And yet when people look at their behavior (the way they substitute wine for blood and forget their god when they see their lovers), they think Mimi and Musetta dance to ignore the worlds falling around them. It never comes to them, that for fire-blooded women at the end of their centuries, what else is there to do but dance?

 

_… there's only now…_

 

Collins and Colline are men from separate eras, the philosopher braving the hunger that has his stomach eating itself and the professor braving the sickness in his blood that’s eating him inside out. Except both are casted into the world for telling a truth that no wants to hear and no one wants to see (that the poor are prey to the rich; that the sick are prey to those with the power to cure them; one few things made timeless is that there are people who would rather content themselves with glittering and glided lies, who place truth upon a pedestal but make outcasts of those who tell a truth that doesn’t align with their ideas of reality).

 

_… There's only here …_

 

Angel and Schaunard are a woman and a man with decades of years to separate them, a drummer with a female soul in a male body (an invert, a transwoman, different terms, same condition) and a violinist who plays to keep himself warm. And yet both provide, in food and warmth and money and love, where both have seen the world for what it can be. For all the years between the pair, that make them strangers, they provide in the knowing that all they have is now ( _today for you, tomorrow for me_ ).

 

_… give in to love, or live in fear …_

 

Mark and Marcello are two different souls, the filmmaker from the AIDS initiative DIVA TV and the painter from the Art Nouveau movement. Only that the two are witnesses; witnesses to the poor and ailing, the lost and the forgotten. And in the end, as they stand behind a camera or behind a paintbrush, they look upon the love and light and shadows and know that all will pass, except for what is immortalized in paint and film (and that they will look back and remember when they stood at the end of the world – a world ending with the death of the 19th century, a world consumed whole by the AIDS crisis – and still feel that grief as if it was yesterday).

 

_… no other path, no other way …_

And in the end, for both and for all (for the idealists and the artists and the dreamers and the witnesses), there will be nothing left to mark that they were there. Nothing but a camera left abandoned in a Alphabet City loft with boxes of old film, marked with names that belong to souls who only live in that film. Nothing but sketch notes and poetry pieces who the dust and age has claimed in a forgotten place in the Latin Quarter.

 

No last dance, no glorious protest, no glory or song. No sign of the life or love or deaths that occurred. Only they are made immortal and timeless in art (by Puccini or Larson or by these very words).

 

_… no day but today!_


End file.
